Tag Archives: yard

Four months of morning sickness with a flu over Christmas for good measure is a nice way to fall behind on…. everything.

Playing catch up now. With…. everything. Today I tackled some yard work while the girls played ran for the street over and over. The roses in front of our house are pretty, but thorny. Obviously. When they start to grow over the sidewalks, I try to save my few remaining pants that fit from being torn. Oh, I mean I try to save my kids from being poked.

Anyway, I hacked away, or pruned if you want to be fancy, until all four weren’t hazards to us as we walked from the driveway to the door, weren’t as full of dead branches, and weren’t as lopsided. Trimming back only the sides that impede walkways tend to the the opposite sides extra long. I worried they’d fall over our something. Well actually, one did. Or half did. It split in two during a storm awhile back, but both halves are still alive. Joe staked it and used twine to tie it back together. His MacGyvering had worked so far!

Oh, and for the record, pruning roses 19 weeks pregnant while chasing two little kids around is a workout. A big one. Just like hacking up dead bushes with an axe at 20 weeks pregnant is. I did that last time while I was pregnant with Lily, just days after closing in this house.

On to a picture! The red wagon holds all the branches I collected from the yard plus the rose debris.

Maybe we’ll have grass this spring? If not, I’m cool with starting the “dirt is the new awesome front yard” trend.

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We have been busy. Super busy! Too busy to blog about all the things we are doing. We spent the weekend emptying the kitchen shelves of things like sedge hammers, crow bars, ect.

Last week, Joe sold the old florescent lights that used to hang in the kitchen on craigslist! Yay extra money. I’m even more excited about the extra space it freed up. The electrical closet in the kitchen is now a took room, pegboard and all. It feels do much less like a construction zone now that we aren’t starting at tools all.the.time.

A much smaller, yet just as awesome weekend project was getting a hose reel. Our hose always snaked ask over the yard threatening to trip me at the most inopportune times. Finally we got a reel at home depot to keep the thing out of the way & prettify the front yard a bit. You know, as long as you ignore the porch full of boxes & dead plants.

Oh! Also, we have a problem in the yard. Hornets are building a nest in the huge rose bush. How to get it out? It’s in the middle, so we can’t get it quickly since we would hack the thing to death before reaching it. We can’t do it slow because well, they are HORNETS. Pissed off hornets do not make for a good time. Anyway here’s a picture of it. And of the new hose reel.

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First, I have no idea why the wordpress app on my phone isn’t publishing things, only saving them as drafts. So if things seem odd time-wise, it’s because of that.

A while back, the loquat tree at the front corner of our house had some minor damage from a storm. Then more damage with the next big storm. Then it happened again. Then it stooped raining (& we are back in major drought), but more branches broke off. Finally Joe & my dad gave it a major haircut & we hauled 90% of the tree to the brush pile in the side yard.

The city is starting brush pick up on Monday for our area, so it was time to haul it out to the curb. Holy cow. 17 5lbs of baby strapped on with the baby wrap, 90° heat with high humidity, and a sprained ankle in a boot makes for a heck if a workout while hauling brush. At least it makes for zero guilt about eating a ton at Henrys Puffy Taco Express!

In semi related news about yummy food, Joe is an awesome ice cream chef! Farmer’s market fruit makes it even better! So does chocolate syrup (Ahlaska! is the best kind imho).

Back to the tree takes, it was too dark to get a photo of the loquat after we finished hauling the branches to the curb. I did get a shot of the piles of brush we moved to the curb though, plus found an old one from after one of those storms. Bug was having a blast helping (that kid is strong & such a hard worker!) & riding in the wheel barrow.

I also grabbed a picture a couple of weeks ago of my mom with our homemade papel picado we made with bug to decorate for Fiesta. We have left it up for today, Cinco de Mayo. Super fun!

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No, sadly this isn’t the tale of fine exotic adventure from a fabulous equally exotic vacation. Just the story of jumping off another eco hippy cliff. I feel like we are edging closer to some serious granola commune status. No worries, I still shave my armpits. Because, well, the alternative is ew. Very ew.
This time we have gone and bought a lawn mower. A push reel mower. No gas. No battery. No cord. Just muscle. Truth be told…. It’s freaking awesome! Seriously. Completely wonderful. We got the Fiskars StaySharp Max. It cuts without the blades actually touching which helps the blades stay sharp for years. It’s easy to push, super quiet, effective, light (in comparison to regular mowers), and very fun. The list of cons is short: larger turning radius than Joe likes, leaves taller blades of grass uncut since the front bar pushes them down before the blades can cut. Both minor issues, and more than made up for by the other great features. It was $199 on Amazon & we are going to submit the receipt to CPS for a $60 rebate. Which I’ll use for a new phone. That doesn’t randomly have the keyboard make my type bold. Or disappear. Though, typing without seeing a single key on a touch screen makes one feel awesome about their skillz. (ego quickly deflated by inability to get dvd player to play)

So thats our latest eco tastic fun. Anybody else living new lawn equipment? Fighting over who gets to mow?

A few weeks ago, I mentioned our loquat tree sustained a bit of damage in a storm. One of the upper branches was broken, but hanging on still. Well, last week, another storm did it in, and a pretty big section fell right off. A few other branches are now hanging downward and damaged, and then there is a now lonely random branch off in space by itself. So we need to cut up the fallen branch, trim off the dead/dying ones, and make the whole thing more symetrical again while also trimming back some of the branches from the house. Aka, we get to hack away at things with a chain saw. Fun times are to be had for sure! 😉

By the way, forgive me if this isn’t coherent. 3:30am play dates with the baby that last almost 2 hours don’t make for awesome blogging! 😉

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We’ve been planting, weeding, mowing, weeding, edging, weeding, watering, weeding like crazy around here. All of this nice warm, wet weather this spring has been great. Especially for the weeds. Did I mention we have weeds? Not just ugly annoying ones, but icky pokey ones with tons of stickers. I have no idea what they’re actually called, but I refer to them just as “sticker plants.” A couple of days ago, we had a 2’x3′ pile a foot high of weeds, just from the area around the iris plants. Oh well. Lots of weeding turns out to be a great workout! It also leaves a pretty yard behind. I love love love love LOVE springtime and all the pretty flowers.

In addition to flowers, we’re trying several varieties of pepper plants, corn, tomatoes, strawberries, basil and rosemary this year. Hopefully our “crop” does well and we get some good food later this spring. We’ve done blueberries in the past at my parents, and may try that again next year. I’m also hoping to add more tomatoes in the future. We have plans to use the raised beds that exist in the back yard, but this year, we have too much on the plate to get more than just one of them going that’s housing our corn. Well, corn seeds for now. Hopefully it turns into real corn. And hopefully the grapefruit, fig, loquat (sp?) and pecan trees also do well. My husband wanted to live on a farm. I hope this is close enough for him to a real farm, because me? City girl.

Here are a few of our flowers. And bug. Kids don’t grow like weeds. Weeds grow like kids!